Hamperdoo is a language learning app that introduces Early French Immersion to Grade 1 students in British Columbia. New language concepts are introduced through a combination of non-digital and digital activities that are designed to complement existing lesson plans.

Photo by Nicole Honeywill on Unsplash

The Design Challenge

As part of a product design class, we were tasked with coming up with a solution that helped teachers introduce a second language to children between 6-10. The solution must take into account novel and interesting ways of engaging the students towards learning second language concepts.

There is a growing need for French Immersion programs in British Columbia, the demand for teachers is currently outnumbering the supply. We concluded that targeting the French pathway is useful and applicable towards a tangible need in the Canadian education system.

Understanding the target users

After conducting discovery sessions and interviews with teachers, parents and student administrators, we extracted the following insights.

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Students Are more engaged when social and gamified activities are used to introduce in-class concepts.

Teachers Want novel and enaging learning tools that are designed to complement existing lesson plan cirriculum.

ParentsAre wary about excessive screentime during a typical school day, and would be more comfortable supporting more physical/social activities.

Design Requirements

After identifing the user need and the main problem, we crafted the following design requirements that the solution must have:

Incorporate a social component

Be designed for minimum screen time use

Use content from real French Immersion lessons plans.

Encourage movement, discourage sedentary time

Be measurable with analytics and progress tracking

Social Learning + Individual Application

To meet the requirements, we decided to design the experience around two complimentary learning methods.

Exposure (physical, social)

Helps with introducing concepts.

Exposure activities are designed to introduce concepts, they are social and physical in nature and require group participation and enagement.

+

Application (digital, individual)

Helps with applying what was learned.

Application activities are designed to implement concepts, they are digital in nature and require individual work.

Tying the activities together

To combine the exposure and application activities, we needed to create a coherent narrative that made switching between the different learning methods logical, useful and engaging. After ideating different solutions, we decided to explore a digital pet concept to tie the activities together. After testing our early prototypes, the feedback encouraged us to further explore and evolve the interaction experience.

Early itertions on how Hamperdoo will help students learn and implement new concepts

The evolution of Hamperdoo

Hamperdoo underwent a series of transformations that were a result of an ideate-test-iterate sprint loop. We were aiming to integrate characteristics of fun, playfulness and warmness into our language teaching mascot. Going through this character evolution taught us about the importance of emotional design and its applicability in driving and encouraging positive behaviour.

Learn and Apply

Hamperdoo eventually matured to becoming a solution that aided teachers in introducing modular lesson concepts. Teachers can benefit from a unique customizable dashboard that allows them to configure class activities, curate lesson units, and monitor and analyze individual student performance in application activities. Students are afforded a simple intuitive interface for engaging with the games within the allowed allotted screen-time use.

Airplay exposure activity

The teacher starts the singing activity by using Airplay to mirror the activity to the classroom projector. That way the students can be introduced to the concepts through a social, group-based singing activity.

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Singing activity: J'aime les Fruits

After the group-based singing activity, the students then receive classroom devices and can replay the song a limited number of times before moving towards the next activity.

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Application Activity

To apply the concepts they learned in the singing activity , students are then guided towards FruitShake - a game that helps them make the correct associations between the new assimilated words and their visual corresponding meaning.

Project takeaways:

Ethical Design

When exploring emotional design, we came across how insights from psychology can be used to create emotional responses in the end user. This led us down a useful analysis of how design can and is currently being used to drive users towards certain behaviours.

Restricting screen use

In a world that is continuously going to demand more screen time from our youth, it is very important to be aware of the dangers and to implement measures to protect the health and well being of younger generations. Time-boxing screen-time and promoting more physical activity in the classroom are only some of the ways that can help mitigate potential dangers accociated with excessive screentime.

My Role

U/X

ResearchIdeationPrototypingTesting

Design

Visual DesignMotion Prototyping

Team Credits

David Sigrist

Project Manager

James Kwon

Developer

Taki (me)

UX, Visual Design

Wenyi Gong

U/X Design

Julia Lastovikova

UI / Character Design

Ghazal Jenab

UI / Character Design

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